


Happy Birthday, Mr. Class President

by alifeasvivid



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff, Gakuen, M/M, fluff for days, happy birthday England 2k18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:50:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alifeasvivid/pseuds/alifeasvivid
Summary: Alfred and Arthur don't speak much since they had a bad fight during freshman year. Now as juniors, everyone is charmed by Alfred and his sunny smile and everyone has shunned Arthur and his stern scowl.Hope is all but lost for the two boys until Alfred decides to give Arthur the birthday present he meant to give him two years ago.





	Happy Birthday, Mr. Class President

**Author's Note:**

> This was on tumblr, but I cleaned it up and gave the ending a bit more oomph and now it's here! This is my birthday gift to England, whom I love.
> 
> It's very cliche but everyone deserves good cliched fluff for their birthday. Especially England.
> 
> Please enjoy~!

Alfred F. Jones never worries about his birthday, even though it’s in the middle of summer. Everyone’s always celebrating anyway, since his birthday is the Fourth of July. He’ll be seventeen this year, but it’s only April and school is still in session.

It’s really easy for Alfred to get all of his friends and even all of their friends to come to his birthday parties. Everyone loves him since he’s the star of all the teams he’s on: baseball, track, swimming, football (the  _real_  one, not soccer) and he’s always friendly and smiling, so yeah, easy. Even the seniors like him.

Instead, the date Alfred actually worries about is April 23rd, which is Arthur Kirkland’s birthday. School is always still going on that day, but Arthur never has a party or even mentions it to anyone. 

It makes Alfred sad because he very clearly remembers when he and Arthur were best friends, until they had a bad falling out in the middle of freshman year. Now they don’t speak, unless Arthur feels it’s necessary to chastise Alfred for something. Alfred wishes he could remember what the fight was about; if he could, he’d probably apologize for his part of it now.

In the intervening time, Arthur became class president, mostly because no one else even wanted to do it. He takes the job way too seriously, in Alfred’s opinion. Arthur is also on the soccer team (even though he calls it football) and he’s actually pretty good, but no one on the team likes him.

No one in the whole school seems to like him. Arthur doesn’t smile or act friendly. He scowls with his thick eyebrows and keeps to himself mostly. Alfred often wonders how much of that is his fault. 

The other thing Alfred worries about when it comes to Arthur... is how much he worries about Arthur. It has to be normal though, right? After all, they’d been best friends since Arthur moved to the US in elementary school. Things like that don’t just disappear, do they? Of course not! So it’s totally normal.

It’s also totally normal that Alfred stares at Arthur a lot, right? No one else has ever really caught his eye the way Arthur does, but it’s just because he wishes Arthur would smile like when they were kids. Arthur smiled all the time back then. It was a nice smile that always made Alfred feel very warm and happy, so of course he just wants to see Arthur do it more often now.

And... you know, it’s definitely, completely and totally normal that Alfred has dreams about Arthur, like...  _those_  kind of dreams. That’s absolutely normal, not even remotely remarkable or anything, right? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s only because Arthur is so beautiful with his brilliant green eyes and messy hair and his freckles and slender, wiry body and it’s not like Alfred can control his dreams! Of course not! But he can control his thoughts and what he does after waking from one of those dreams so...

Well, fuck.

Alright, so Alfred F. Jones is as much in love with Arthur Kirkland as he always has been. Was that why they fought? It’s so hard to remember.

That’s probably for the best because if Alfred could remember what tore them apart, he probably wouldn’t have the guts to do what he’s about to do now, which is give Arthur the birthday present he had gotten for him before the fight. He’d never had a chance to give it to him. It’s a leather-bound journal with cool yellowy pages that look old. It’s well-made, but fairly plain actually, now that Alfred thinks of it, but his fourteen year old self had written on the first page, “Dear Arthur, happy birthday. Let’s be best friends forever. Maybe we can be more than best friends too, I hope. I love you. Love, Alfred.”

So he corners Arthur at his locker between classes. “Hey,” he says to get Arthur’s attention, it’s possibly more aggressive than he meant it to be.

Arthur visibly jumps. “Al-Alfred! Bloody hell, you scared me.” In an instant, surprise is replaced with the ever-present scowl. “What do you want? I’m not going to apologize for getting you detention last week, you know.”

“Meet me after school. At the park. Please.”

Arthur looks at the boy who was once his best friend skeptically. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

Arthur slams his locker door shut and glares up at Alfred. “Jones. You and I are not friends. We barely speak to each other and I got you in trouble last week. For all I know, you want me to meet you after class so you and any number of your teammates can beat me up.” Arthur shakes, both with rage and fear. Even though he hasn’t been friends with Alfred for awhile, he’s still reasonably certain that Alfred wouldn’t lead a charge against him, but several of Alfred’s friends might and they might just be using Alfred to get him to show up. Arthur worries constantly that his feelings for Alfred aren’t as secret as he thinks they are.

Alfred looks alarmed. “What? Why in the hell would I do that!? Are people doing that to you, Arthur? Are they hurting you?”

Arthur’s eyes widen at Alfred’s sudden show of concern. He looks down. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, my answer is no. You can bloody well go to the park by yourself for all I care. You can sit there alone until it’s dark out.” Arthur slings his book bag over his shoulder and turns to leave. He can barely stand to look at Alfred anymore and he can only wish that it would be because he hated him.

Instead, Arthur Kirkland is as much in love with Alfred F. Jones as he always has been. It doesn’t seem likely to ever change.

He loved him as the little boy with a beaming, half-toothless smile when he was the only one in their class who would even talk to Arthur. He loved him as the gangly kid who had limbs he was only ever vaguely aware of. He loved him even when they were preteens with acne and braces and strange feelings neither quite knew what to do with. And he loves Alfred now, with his broad shoulders and toned chest and his perfect face which still has those bright blue eyes and beaming smile.

Alfred catches him by the hand and turns red when Arthur looks back at him. “Please, Arthur. I promise it’s not what you think.” He gives Arthur the same pleading look he always had when they were younger and Alfred wanted to do something that would probably land them in some moderately dangerous situation or another.

Arthur has always been rubbish at saying no to that look. “Alright. Fine.” He really doesn’t want to go. He wants to go home and open his birthday present from his mum, which will inevitably be a new book. He wants to read that book while stuffing his face with the faerie cakes she made and trying to pretend that everything is alright.

But then Alfred’s face breaks into that beaming smile, directed straight at Arthur for the first time in ages, and Arthur hates himself for the way his knees become goo over it. “Great!” Alfred exclaims. “Thanks Arthur, you won’t regret it!” Arthur thinks he hears Alfred mumble “I hope” as the bell rings and he runs off, though he can’t be sure.

But he already regrets it. The idea of meeting Alfred in the park, what he might possibly want to discuss, sets Arthur on edge for the rest of the day. There’s no possible way that Alfred remembers that today is Arthur’s birthday. Alfred has always been so oblivious. Was that what they fought about freshman year? It’s so hard to remember.

Arthur is on edge enough that he jumps once more when the final bell rings. It’s two steps forward in the name of sheer curiosity and one step back in the name of anxiety over what could be a trap all the way to the park. The curiosity morphs into a hope, first a hope that he’s wrong, then a hope that Alfred wants to be his friend again. The anxiety slides into fear and an insistence that his hope is utterly unfounded. Yet the hope is so airy and bright that even its own irrationality cannot obscure it.

He gets there eventually. He even gets there before Alfred does, or at least, he doesn’t see Alfred waiting for him. He wanders a bit, looking around, hope sinking with every step. Arthur begins to think it must be a trick and eventually works himself up into a panic that not only are his feelings for Alfred not a secret, but that even _Alfred_ knows about them and this was all a joke at Arthur’s expense.

He’d rather have had the beating.

“Hey, Arthur,” he hears Alfred’s voice behind him.

Arthur whirls around to see the boy who used to be his best friend standing there, holding a silver mylar balloon with the words “Happy Birthday” emblazoned across it in different colors. “Alfred? What—?”

“It’s your birthday. Don’t tell me even you forgot.” Alfred says, trying to smile and play it off like a joke, but he’s clearly nervous about something, so it falls rather flat. He holds out the balloon. “This is for you.”

The dim embers of hope for their friendship that had been tamped down over the past two years ignite dazzlingly in Arthur’s heart as he takes the string attached to the balloon from Alfred, but the tail-end of the string is tied around a wrapped present. It’s roughly the same size and shape as the presents he gets from his mum. Arthur wriggles the gift free and hands the balloon back to Alfred, who ties the string loosely around Arthur’s wrist and smiles lopsidedly.

Alfred rocks back and forth on his heels as Arthur carefully opens the present.

“Stop fidgeting, you’re making me nervous,” Arthur says, but it’s not nearly as snappish as he intends it to be. The present reveals itself as a green leather-bound journal. “Oh, um…”

“I know it’s not… it’s not enough to make up for everything, but I got it for you before we… well… before. I never had a chance to give it to you.”

Arthur can feel his cheeks heating up and he’s not sure if it’s from Alfred directly or if it’s the hope now burning radiantly in his chest. Probably both. “Thank you, Alfred. It’s lovely. I—”

“You should, um, you should open it.”

Arthur opens it slowly, as though it might bite him. “The pages are very nice,” he remarks, turning a few back and forth and wondering what might be worth noting about them.

Alfred chews his lip a little, rocks on his heels once and then forces himself to stay still. “Yeah, but I wrote on the first one… a long time ago.”

Arthur’s brow furrows and he turns to it, reading what Alfred wrote two years ago, and suddenly the absurdity of it hits him. He’s standing in the middle of the park near the school, with the boy who used to be his best friend and whom he has always loved, with a balloon tied to his wrist, holding a present that has waited two years to meet him in his hands with an inscription that could possibly change everything and… “Do you still mean it? What you wrote?” Arthur says around the lump in his throat with tears welling up in his eyes.

Alfred scratches the back of his neck the way he always has when he feels embarrassed, but he doesn’t look away. “Yeah, yes, I do… if you want me to, I mean—”

“Yes! Of course I want you to!” Arthur throws himself at Alfred and Alfred catches him easily, holds him tight. The journal falls to the grass at their feet and the balloon flies away and they kiss and a few years later at their wedding, they will argue over who kissed whom first, but it’ll be hard to remember.

It always is when you really love someone.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos are love. Comments are life.


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